In thirty-three days, I will be boarding a flight back to California, and I don’t know when I will be back. Though I have endless memories, both happy and sad, I still feel as if I hadn’t written down as much as I’ve wanted, I hadn’t taken enough photographs, I hadn’t seen enough things, made enough friends. Between finishing up my Fulbright grant, studying for the GRE, applying for graduate school, and starting full-time work, the past few months have melted away without a chance for reflection or relaxation. While I am ready and excited to start the next chapter of my life, a part of me is sad to leave China. Luckily, once I get home I’ll have more time for myself (and graduate school applications!!), for photography, for fast and uncensored internet, for all the other things I enjoy in life. One thing I’ll miss about China: women in pajamas and hair curlers on a public street playing with dogs (and naturally with 10+ people crowded around taking pictures and gossiping)
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It’s not easy being a woman in China. In the workplace, women face the glass ceiling phenomenon, but there’s also a sticky floor, wherein women in low-paying jobs get paid less than men of equal skill level. In their personal lives, they are bombarded by images in mass media, telling them they need to be thinner, fairer, taller. While many societies promote equal political and social rights for women (China being one of them), it’s rare to see it fully implemented in practice. This entry is about when I’ve received some sort of discrimination based on my gender at the pool. I don’t have any specific conclusions or policy recommendations; this is just a story of my life in China. When I was studying in Harbin last year, I often went to Heilongjiang University’s pool. Every time I went, I stuck out as one of the fastest swimmers in the pool. I befriended the lifeguards there, who welcomed my presence every time with a smile and a wave. One lifeguard, ? (Li), in his late 40s, single, would often swim with me and race me. He always tried to invite me out to another pool he worked at during his
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Uyghurs are an ethnic minority of Turkic origin and Islamic faith that live in Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR, or Xinjiang) in China, which today accounts for one-sixth of its land mass. As of 1998, Uyghurs comprised 45 percent of the 18.5 million citizens in Xinjiang; the Han Chinese comprised 40.58 percent of Xinjiang’s population. Two cultures, the Han Chinese represented by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the Uyghurs (the largest minority group in Xinjiang), provide two different interpretations of the history of the formation and maintenance of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR). The CCP and Chinese scholars argue that Xinjiang has always been a part of China. Xinjiang has been under political contestation since the late eighteenth century, when the Qing reconquered the area. Political unrest became increasingly prominent since the late-1800s and sporadically manifests into violent opposition, especially during the late-1980s and early-1990s. From the 1820s to the 1870s, the Uyghurs posed a significant challenge to Qing conquests in the area until the Qing re-conquered the majority of the land. In 1884, the Manchu Qing empire brought Xinjiang under its control and incorporated it into the Chinese empire. The Manchus appointed hereditary princes and staffed local
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First, Twitter did not revolutionize citizen protests. If anything, it made for lazy journalism, wherein reporters and journalists spend time reading what other people have tweeted than providing their own analysis of the situation. It should be known that Iran still remains a vastly opaque country, with information becoming even more muddled as the Iranian government shuts down many communication services and blocks web access. Just today, reports of the Obama Administration scrambling for reliable information made the news. While Twitter has provided breaking, up-to-the-minute news about what’s going on in Iran, is the source to be trusted? You have to wonder who on the “other side” is reporting. There have been many false reports of protest traps, Mousavi under house arrest, and election results . Additionally, there has also been speculation that Iranian hardliner elites are manipulating the protests to “hoist themselves back into power.” Just like any other news source, you cannot take what you read at face value. What Twitter, YouTube, and 24-hour news syndicates have proven, though, is that media is very saturated in the average computer-user’s life. Thus, the repeated news stories from citizen journalists, bloggers, and reporters lead us to believe that much more
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Cabbie: Men should have two women in their lives. One to be by their side, and one in their heart (he meant in his pants). Me: Do you have two women in your life? Cabbie: Yes, of course. Me: What about women? Can they have two men in their lives? Cabbie: I haven’t thought about it. 我对这没有研究. Cabbie: How old are you? Me: 23. Cabbie: And you’re not married yet? Me: I don’t even have a boyfriend. Cabbie: You don’t even have a boyfriend?!? I think it’s time you put less focus on your work life and focus on finding a husband and settling down. You should let the man take care of everything, then you can stay home and relax. How great would that be? Me: Actually…. Cabbie: Cabbie: You know why women would be bad doctors? Because they’re too emotional. Let me give you an example. A woman has breast cancer, goes into a woman doctor. This woman doctor may think to herself, “I want to let this woman keep as much of her womanly features as she can, because I know it is important to her
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James Fallows painted a bleak picture of what it’d be like to visit TAM Square on June 4. So when I decided to visit today, I decided to forgo bringing my Canon 5d and brought my compact camera, instead. Indeed, more plainclothes security than visitors that day. Some followed us, others tried to photograph us, but all-in-all a very uneventful day (as expected). Guard standing at one of the entrances to the Square Sea of umbrellas Just standing around with umbrellas, very inconspicuous Tons of ?? (wujing, special police forces)
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Let today be known as the day the Chinese government impaled the internet with its mighty spear of technology and added Flickr, Twitter, Hotmail, bing.com, live.com to its repertoire of blocked sites. Other sites blocked in China include: Blogspot, Tumblr, YouTube, WordPress, China Digital Times, and Huffington Post. 56minus1 speculates this may have to do with Ai Weiwei joining Twitter. Lostlaowai says it has to do with that special 20th anniversary on Thursday. Whatever the reason, this isn’t making my “I hate China” week any better. Edit: an exhaustive list of all the websites “down for maintenance” has been compiled. Check it out here.
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Yesterday, the WSJ posted an article called “An Expat’s Exotica.” It basically contends that expat havens such as Beijing and Shanghai are no longer considered “exotic” by Western standards because so many Westerners now live there and because these cities can now accommodate the familiar Western lifestyle. The author exalts those who veer off the beaten path, living in exotic places such as Changsha, Hunan or Wuhan, Hubei. He highlights a woman named Janie Corum, who is “pioneering the vast region for American businesses, striving to create a more comfortable environment (emphasis added),” paving the way for Westerners to discover China’s “remote corners.” This is the most ridiculous piece of journalism I have encountered in a while. That people still label countries (or parts of countries) as “exotic” is beyond me. Granted, much of Asia is still a mystery to many Westerners, but that is no excuse to call a culture exotic.* If anything, it a) just proliferates the need among Westerners to “understand” a supposedly mysterious and remote culture by infiltrating or dominating a foreign civilization (a la imperialism, colonialism), and b) perpetuates the notion of “Orientalism,” a European concept invented to label Asia as a place of exoticism,
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A few days ago, I found out that one of my male Chinese friends has gone to another city in China become a “duck” (鸭子, 男妓). I was actually quite unfamiliar with the phenomenon and even laughed when someone told me he went to go 养鸭 (yang3 ya1, raise ducks, a euphemism for male prostitution), because at first I thought he became a duck farmer. The name “duck” complements their female counterparts, who are called chickens, (妓女). According to The Observer, more and more Chinese women “buy a duck for a few hours of chatting, drinking and flirting.” While ordering a duck used to only be prevalent among middle-aged women, increasingly more younger women are also finding ducks to accompany them through a night of drinking, karaoke, or more. I became curious as to the life of a duck in China and searched some blogs and forums. One 19-year-old said on a forum: I am a 19-year-old duck. My family is poor. I am a high school graduate, and it is imperative for me to find a woman to take care of me, I can do whatever she wants me to do!…I can visit your home every day to serve
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Soooo cheesy, I love it. Who doesn’t love it when masses of people gather and dance together?
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